


I Leave This at Your Ear

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:37:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sam Kirk's death, Spock tracks Jim down on Earth.<br/>Takes place shortly after the episode "Operation -- Annihilate!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Leave This at Your Ear

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same universe as my other K/S stories,  
> about a year after "At My Most Beautiful," though I think it can  
> stand alright on its own.
> 
> It's been pointed out to me that some of the cultural details in  
> this story don't match canon. To which I can only say that these  
> stories do tend that way. I tend to rely as much on my  
> conceptions of how the world will look in three or four hundred  
> years as I do on show precedent.
> 
> This is the "first-time" story for this series. Odd that I  
> should leave it so long.
> 
> Many thanks to Mary Ellen Curtin for Spock advice and help with  
> other details.

Spock climbed out onto the roof of the coffin hotel and waited.

He was cold, but on Earth he was always cold.  Even in high  
summer he sometimes shivered, and this was only a very warm  
spring.  Still, he had dressed in both a sweater and the service  
coat from his father's years as Ambassador on that planet, and he  
was comfortable enough in the circulating air that he wouldn't  
need to go in for some time.  His mother had given the coat to  
him years ago, and at the time he'd only stared at her in  
confusion.  Her human-cold hands clutching his for a second and  
then pressing the garment into his grasp.  His father must have  
owned the coat when his parents had met, but he couldn't grasp  
whatever significance that his mother had intended in giving it  
to him at that juncture.  He suspected that his father didn't  
know she'd done it.  But he was grateful for it tonight: the  
heavy felt and satin covered his hips and blocked the worst of  
the chill.

Cross-legged on the roof, staring across the low cityscape at  
ground transports streaking past in the remaining light.  Motors  
made of ceramic and light generated only the tiniest of sounds,  
but he was evolved to listen in a thin atmosphere, and when he  
was still he could sense not only the sound waves but also the  
sub-aural vibrations of engines and impact.

The coffin hotel was strung together of prefabricated cubicles,  
one and a half metres square by two metres long, that were padded  
on the floors for sleep and intended for nothing more elaborate  
than the rest of those not concerned with luxury.  It was half a  
century old, most likely, but solidly constructed, and as it  
needed little outward beauty to fulfill its purpose, the complex  
might stand for a full century yet.

Fully dark now, and if he relaxed into meditation, the running  
lights on transports would extend into the streaks of slow-  
capture photography.  Des Moines rose behind him with the  
delicacy of a city formed of glass and information.

It had taken him twenty-seven hours to request and confirm leave  
from Starfleet Command, and by then Jim Kirk had already left.    
His captain had been granted automatic bereavement leave upon the  
completion of their mission, that he might bury his dead brother  
and sister-in-law and grieve for them suitably.  The core emotion  
of loss was beyond Spock's experience, but for days as the  
Enterprise travelled to Earth he'd been aware of Jim Kirk at the  
centre of the bridge as a thinly-shielded mass of bleeding pain.    
He'd been silent in his command chain, spoken only when spoken  
to, bitten his nails.  Bloody-red arcs where he'd cut them down  
too far.

There was no public funeral.  Jim Kirk took his nephew Peter and  
the pair of bodies and beamed down to his family home, where the  
dead were presumably interred, the child consoled, and the  
ceremonies of passing carried out.  Spock had not intruded, but  
he had taken his communicator and his reading and settled himself  
within driving distance.  And waited.

Kirk hadn't asked him for anything, but he never did.  Their  
friendship had formed out of Spock's tolerant silences and Jim's  
teasing, the mutual delicacy of their chess matches, and the  
fragments of loneliness that Jim radiated at odd moments.  On the  
last run, McCoy had hovered and offered comfort that wasn't  
accepted, and once rebuffed he'd come to Spock to offer up his  
guilt for Spock's near-mutilation.  That guilt had been harder to  
grasp than Jim's rock-hard fragility, but he'd offered the same  
response: unjudging silence that gradually swallowed human agony.    
McCoy had sat with him most of that evening, often talking,  
always drinking, and by the time he went to bed he hadn't  
radiated anything but drunken exhaustion.  Only after that, Jim  
had drifted over and knelt in front of Spock a moment, stared up  
at him.  Shuttered hazel eyes staring into his, and for half a  
moment a cool touch on his knee.  Flash of

//pain loss loneliness Samisgone dead dead deaddeaddead  
whatamIgoingtodo whycan'tIswallowthishurt//

before the hand retracted, and then Jim was physically gone and  
psychically shuttered, and the next morning he'd taken the child  
and left.

Spock had oriented himself to face the Kirk farm when he sat  
down, used his tricorder to fine-tune his posture.  After an  
hour's silence, he realised he was psychically reaching for his  
friend, but the distance was too huge for him to sense anything.    
All he received was random impressions of human life and the  
streaking thoughts and vibrations of travel.  It was fully dark.  
Lights spread for half a mile and then thinned as Des Moines gave  
way to agricultural Iowa and the strangely feral vegetation that  
almost swallowed it up.

He climbed down.

*****

He hadn't been prepared for this emptiness.  Vulcan's emptiness  
was one of desert and dry air and meditative stillness.  What  
struck him while he hovered at the edge of the yard was the  
absence of the clutter that seemed to characterize human life.    
There were earth beds that might be cultivated in summer months,  
but they were empty now.  The grass between him and the house was  
wild but close-clipped.  He couldn't make out a vehicle.

He had extinguished his high beams a hundred metres from yard's  
entrance and coasted in with only small running lights and the  
luminosity of the control panel.  Now he stood beside his rented  
groundcar and listened.  A human fear of the dark might have led  
an observer to mistake him for the fabled risen dead.  Black  
clothes, black hair, white, white skin stripped almost colourless  
by the olive blood underneath it.  Something about the nocturnal  
luminesces on this planet made him almost glow in the dark.  Only  
his stillness refused to suggest a threat.  He'd never offered  
violence to a living thing except in the defence of others, and  
the willful harm humans sometimes did one another was mind-  
boggling to him.

He gathered himself finally and padded across the unmarked yard.    
The grass outside the manicured area was tall, and already  
thickly green.  In the growing season, this place must be  
enormously lush.

The steps were soft boards, treated with protector once but long  
since softened in the humidity.  They gave a little under his  
feet when he pushed off them into the screened porch.  There were  
no lights on in the house, though one window was open, and for a  
moment he demanded of himself what logic had led him to a visit  
that would rouse those better left to sleep and heal.

When he brushed his mind out, though, he could feel Jim Kirk  
sitting awake in the darkened kitchen.  Instead of withdrawing  
once he'd established the presence, though, he stayed open,  
drifting to see if Jim would sense him.  His consciousness  
absorbed everything that drifted through its openness, laying in  
sense-memories of the place.  Trees just beginning to flex in the  
growing warmth.  Wood of the house and its slightly chipped  
paint.  The boy was upstairs, dreaming.  Not the nightmares of  
the traumatized, just shards of the day cycling through his  
unconscious.  Jim Kirk psychically bleeding two and a half metres  
from where Spock stood.

"Is someone there?"  Raw voice.  Jim didn't sound like he  
actually believed anyone was, but the human-animal fear of the  
dark was present even in a trained Starfleet officer.

//yes    can you hear me//

"Who's there?"  More harshly.  Soft feet padded across the  
interior floor, and he could hear fingers brush at a light panel  
before Jim apparently decided against further illumination.  Then  
fumbling with a lock and the interior door opened, leaving only  
the screen between them.

Jim walked like he hurt.  He was shirtless, and Spock's skin  
momentarily crawled at the idea of nakedness in the chill before  
he reminded himself that for humans this would be a warm night.  
"Who's there?"

"Captain."  He moved a little out of the shadow so that Jim could  
see his profile at least.

"Spock.  Is something wrong?"  Tiredly.  He wondered how long it  
had been since the man had slept decently.

"Almost certainly.  However, there is no crisis you need to  
attend to at present."  He stayed where he was, watching the man  
behind the screen.  After a moment, Kirk retrieved something from  
the kitchen and stepped outside.  His bathrobe.  He wrapped it  
around his shoulders but didn't put it on properly, and he was  
still barefoot.

Silence between them while a small wind shifted the tree branches  
against one another.

"Spock, why are you here?" Kirk said finally.

"Would you prefer the philosophical answer or the simple one?"

A snort.  "I don't think I can resist.  The philosophic one."

"Suffering increases entropy and speeds the heat death of the  
universe."

"Surak.  I know that one.  I think I'm going to need the simple  
version, though."

Pause.  "I wish to ease your unhappiness, if I am able.  Because  
you are my friend."  Reflecting into the silence his irritation  
with the limits of the Standard language.

Bitterly, Jim said, "McCoy called three times yesterday.  I  
wouldn't talk to him.  What makes you think I'll talk to you?"

"Because I will not require you to speak at all."

A longer silence this time.  Spock left his presence open so that  
even Jim's human-psi mind could sense it if he so chose.    
Finally, "Did you drive here?"

"I did."

"Fine.  Wait while I get my shoes."

*****

Spock reflected that the first hard rain in that country must be  
something people dreamed of.  Even now, what colours he could see  
were made more vivid by the humidity.  Water shimmering in the  
air around him.  When Kirk came out, shod and shirted but still  
naked-seeming, Spock had offered him the keys, but he had  
declined, settled rather into the passenger's seat and stayed  
there.  He didn't speak until the lights of a fuelling station  
appeared, and then he only asked Spock to pull in.

Spock waited in the driver's seat while Kirk went in.  When the  
man came out again, he had a cup of coffee cradled against his  
chest like a wounded animal.  Spock noticed how the other humans  
in the parking lot didn't look at him.  Avoidance, he supposed.    
The superstitious need not to see grief lest it attach itself to  
them.  But he couldn't have looked away if he'd tried.  The man  
in his running lights was perfectly golden, graceful even in his  
suffering.  Aesthetically pleasing, but also . . . *kyat*,  
manifestly existent, far too much so to ever be ignored.

He kept driving, awaited an expression of Kirk's wishes.  Only  
once he tried to withdraw back behind his psychic shields, but  
the other man reached out for him immediately.  A hand on his  
wrist, but he recognized it as the physical representation of  
what Jim could not yet accomplish mentally.  And he had conceded,  
stayed open, encompassing them both.

Finally, he gave up on a response from his companion and simply  
pulled over.  There was light on the eastern horizon; he could  
feel it touching the back of his neck.  If he had had a greater  
knowledge of the terrain, he would have chosen somewhere near  
deep water, but he knew of none.  There were only miles of  
ploughed fields and pasture.  The wind coming over them was  
surprisingly sharp.  He leaned into it for a long moment after he  
got up.  Turned only after that to spot Kirk making his way to  
sit under one of the few trees.

When Spock joined him, Kirk said, "If you mention Sam, even once,  
I'm going to walk away and leave you."

"Illogical, Jim.  You are fifty-two kilometres from home"

"You think I won't?"

"I believe you would.  If only because I know you to be  
impossibly stubborn.  But I understand your request, and I will  
not."

"Thanks."

He sat.  Beside him, Jim squirmed occasionally as if he were  
uncomfortably living in his own skin.  Quietly, "You know, I  
can't sleep?  Peter goes to sleep and has nightmares, but I can't  
sleep at all.  I just feel tired and numb and raw.  I hadn't seen  
Sam in years; I don't know why this hurts so much."  Pause.    
"This doesn't even mean anything to you, does it?  Emotion is  
just . . ."  Another pause.  "You shouldn't have to put up with  
this.  I'm upset and you're letting me take it out on you."

"I believe I gave you permission to do so."

"Gave me . . ."  Kirk twisted to stare at him.  "Oh god, you're  
joking aren't you."

"Jim."  Reproachful.  And he was teasing, though he would deny  
it.  Because Jim was at his most vibrant when he was provoked.

"You *are*, and I'll never be able to prove it.  Who'd believe  
me?  I'll tell Bones, and he'll say, 'Yes, Jim,' and then he'll  
pump me full of drugs and ship me to the funny farm and I'll  
spend the rest of my life making bead-pictures and playing  
Bingo."  Kirk hissed in frustration and thumped his back against  
the tree.

"It would be a waste of a fine officer," Spock said.

"Don't *do* that."  Pause.  "Besides, what do you care?  You  
think I'm crazy anyway."

"If I thought you were unbalanced, I would have dispatched a  
psychiatric team instead of a science officer."

"So I'm stubborn and emotional and illogical, but not crazy.    
Fantastic.  Why do you put up with me?"

"Because you are my friend."

"You always stumble over that word when you say it.  It's not  
dirty, you know.  There doesn't even have to be emotion implicit  
in it, if you don't want."

Spock sighed, sorted his thoughts.  The Federation Standard  
language was a marvel of precision and variety; each idea it  
expressed was carefully distinct.  As a scientist, he delighted  
in it.  Vulcan, for all its dispassion, had developed its  
scientific vocabulary during a cultural renaissance, and its  
terms were often composites of meaning and description that  
occasionally failed to provide clarity.  In other things, though  
. . . it was his first language, and its semantics still laid the  
patterns for his thoughts.

Jim's hand rested beside Spock's knee, close enough that it was  
easy to pick up.  Kirk didn't seem to notice, even when Spock  
began tracing the creases in his palm.  Spock considered letting  
go, but nothing would be gained at this point by reserve.  If he  
answered honestly, there would be little left for him to hide, in  
any case.  He made the next stroke with two fingers, running  
along the back of the big hand, over the fingers and into the  
palm, around the wrist and back to meet the matching fingers on  
Kirk's hand.  Delicacy of a kiss.

"In Vulcan," Spock said, "the word for 'friend' is *t'hy'la*.  It  
also means 'beloved.'  I have been unable to find any single word  
in Standard that carries both those meanings."

A long silence while the sun rose.  Jim was still close beside  
his shoulder, a cool, underclothed presence.  The hand still  
rested in his; their hands rested together on his thigh.  He  
wondered whether Jim even recognized the significance of the  
touch Spock had offered.  Human eroticism as he had studied it  
did not focus significantly on touch in non-erogenous zones; the  
man might have taken the gesture for simple comfort.

Kirk said, "Did you just say you love me?"

"Would you prefer the simple answer or the philosophical one?"

"Simple.  I'm exhausted."

"Yes."  And he could feel the man's delight expand into his open  
consciousness, honest and brilliant gold.  A moment later, Jim  
had shifted his body over so that they were in almost full  
contact, and Jim's head was against his shoulder.

"Thank you."  In his head //thank you thank you    
thankyouthankyouthankyou//.  "We should go back.  Are you alright  
to drive?"

Spock nodded.  He could feel Jim's exhaustion bleeding, more  
immediate than pain.  He had to help the man stand up, had to  
assist him to the car and settle him in the laid-back passenger's  
seat.  Kirk was shivering, whether from cold or exhaustion Spock  
didn't know, but he stripped off his father's coat and wrapped it  
around the compact golden body, using one sleeve as a pillow for  
the sagging head.

And drove, watching the road with both eyes, stretching out a  
hand only occasionally to brush darkening hair off that forehead.

*****

When he came back it was nightfall.  Warmer tonight, darker.  The  
cloud layer was close to the ground, insulating and raising the  
humidity even more.  He lowered his shields again, but at first  
he could find no one.  The boy was missing; his presence even in  
sleep had been aching, agonized without any layer of reason  
bandaging the wound.  When he reached deeper, though, he could  
feel the muted gold that was Jim Kirk, drowsing but not asleep.  

When Spock had taken the man home and put him to bed, it had been  
only an hour past dawn.  Spock had gone back to his hotel  
afterward and slept as well, rolled into the semi-fetal ball that  
preserved his body heat in cold climates.  He rested through two  
sleep cycles, long enough to pass through REM sleep several  
times, but there was little of his dreams that he could remember,  
only fragments of home and flashes of a too-human desire.  By the  
time he surfaced, he was achingly hard, and it took long  
meditative minutes to bring his body under some semblance of  
control.

The physical reaction notwithstanding, he was surprised by his  
calm.  At some point in the last twelve  hours he'd reached a  
perfect, still place in which his motivations and his actions  
matched one another.  If he was waiting on the porch now, it was  
only to gain a sense of the night, and of Jim's still-ragged aura  
just beyond the door.

"I know you're a pacifist, but if you keep lurking out there like  
a thief in the night, I'm going to get worried."  Softly  
humourous.  Jim had opened the door and leaned against its frame,  
one hand pressed to the screen's delicate wires.

"Good evening, Jim.  I did not expect to find you alone."

"Mom took Peter to Stockholm.  There's a counselling program  
there that's ready to take him."  He straightened and opened the  
door, kept it propped open so that Spock had to brush that other  
body with his in order to step inside.  "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For coming tonight.  For coming last night.  I got to sleep this  
morning for the first time in days."  He half-reached for Spock,  
then apparently thought better of it and padded away.  "It's good  
to have company."

If he hadn't been so mentally open, he wouldn't have been able to  
feel Jim reaching for him.  The man was as low-psi as most  
humans, but he fought against that limitation as he did all  
others.  As though by sheer will he could press beyond the limits  
of his mind.

Spock was in the kitchen, close behind the other man, when he saw  
Jim sway.  Exhaustion, most likely, compounded by grief.  He was  
not as strong as he pretended.  Spock extended an arm and caught  
the barely rounded shoulders, let the weight rest against him.    
Across the touch,

//oh god why can I still feel him     want just to be still      
want to stop hurting    want my brother back       curse you Sam  
why did you have to leave me//

flared, and Spock staggered for a moment before his training  
stepped in to buffer the emotional shockwave.

He found that he'd drawn the man close to him, wrapped his wool-  
clad arms around naked shoulders and stilled himself.  How could  
Jim stand to be shirtless in this cold air?  A singular  
sensation, though, cool human skin against the fabric of his  
clothes, Jim's face tearless against his shoulder.

He hadn't experienced this stillness in too many years.  The  
interior life of an old house, the air currents swirling outside,  
the soft sounds of Jim's breath and heartbeat settled at the back  
of his mind, so that Spock was first aware of the silence  
surrounding them both.  He could carry Jim upstairs, put him to  
bed, make him rest, but Jim would never forgive that affront to  
his dignity.  Instead, he let Jim lead him.  The other man had  
pulled back until only their fingers were still laced.  Spock  
wondered if he should mention that to him this touch was more  
intimate than a kiss.  

He followed Kirk up the stairs, stepped after him into the naked  
bedroom where he'd settled his friend the night before.  He'd sat  
on that bed and listened to and felt the man fall asleep. Watched  
the expanding light through the sheet glass windows, studied  
faults in the glass created over the course of century or more in  
which it had flowed slowly downward.

Though it seemed inhumane to him tonight, the windows were both  
cracked open.  When he bent over Kirk as the other man laid back  
on the bed, he could feel the cross-draft ruffle his hair.  To  
Jim it probably felt good, but Spock was going to be cold if he  
left things as they were.  For half a minute, he stood over the  
other man in the darkness, invisibly burying himself in the  
necessary warmth of his coat, then brushed a kiss across the  
human-cool forehead.  Stood, walked to the windows, and closed  
them both.

He was aware suddenly of the blueness of the dark.  Jim was  
prone, lying on his back, and his chest moved deliberately with  
each inhalation.  Now, finally, he could take his coat off, lay  
it over the chair and toe off his shoes.  Come to the bed and lie  
within arm's reach of this man.  Kirk didn't turn towards him.

Long silence.

"When you first go into the desert," Spock said finally, "you  
discover that you need words your language does not supply."

Jim turned now to look at him, then twisted his hips and rolled  
onto his belly.  Hiding or simply seeking comfort Spock couldn't  
tell.

"I'm sorry, it's not somewhere I've ever been."  The words  
slightly muffled by the pillow against his cheek.

"Illogical to apologize.  The desert will still be there when you  
arrive."  He had wanted to say 'planet.'  He was speaking already  
in terms of inevitability, but he was so sure that this man would  
eventually come to Vulcan.  "You have never visited my    
homeworld."

"No."

"It is a planet of deserts, strung together by wells and  
sheltering only two oceans.  I grew up without the presence of  
water.  The air was very dry, a humidity of less than five  
percent on most days.  We lived on the very edge of Shi'Kahr,  
where the desert extending to Gol begins."  Jim had settled his  
face against the pillow.  Both his arms wrapped almost    
protectively around it.  Spock extended a hand and rested it on  
one bared shoulder blade.  "When I was ten years old, I climbed  
one of the watchtowers at midday so I could feel the winds.  They  
were cool, higher up, and smelled different."  He stroked down  
slowly, keeping his hand just to the left of Kirk's spine.

"The towers date from before we were spacefaring.  They were  
outposts.  The city has grown immensely since.  The towers are  
mud brick structures in the midst of low-density housing.  At  
that distance from the city's core, dwellings are not arranged in  
any set pattern; rather, they are seated at aesthetic  
intervals."  He circled, running first the heel of his palm, then  
the pads of his fingers over the pale skin.  Rolled his hand over  
and began scratching gently.  "There is no logical impasse in  
this.  Space is not at a premium, and an orderly people do not  
require entirely regularized infrastructures."

He scratched Kirk's back and shoulders gently.  His nails were  
trimmed short enough to prevent damage, and he knew that the  
sensation would soothe as thoroughly as a deep muscle rub without  
inflicting stress on the man's already-tired body.  

"I climbed the tower in the early morning.  So high up, the  
smells of cultivated plants and of domestic water vanish.  The  
winds from the desert are marked by its peculiar scent.  It  
fascinated me.  I stayed there for hours, trying to identify its  
source."  Tracing the muscle-lines of Jim's back.  He sat up so  
that he could reach better.  He could feel the bright-sharp  
sensation that Jim radiated back at him.  "My father came looking  
for me in the early evening.  I was not able to read him, then,  
but I do not think he was entirely displeased, though I had  
missed an entire day of lessons and left no notice of my  
whereabouts.

"Much later, I understood that the desert is a living element of  
my planet, and that what I was smelling was the desert's essence.    
No smell at all, simply a fragment of dry taste."

He couldn't make it clearer than that.  Standard couldn't  
approach the concepts, and even Vulcan had no particular words  
for them.  Odd that words to express emotions should be preserved  
while those needed to express sensory input shout not exist.    
That it would be easier to sing love across a lover's skin than  
to express the taste of that one's skin where his spine hollowed  
as he lay very still under a touch.  He could meditate on this  
body for hours, reciting for himself the variations of gold in  
hair and skin and eyes, repeating the image of this sudden,  
uncharacteristic stillness.

Jim snaked a hand back and caught Spock's, pulled it forward to  
his lips.  Kissed the fingers' pads, the blunt tips, the creases  
that marked his joints.  Then cradled the captured hand in front  
of him and began the caress of a Vulcan kiss, and if Spock hadn't  
been sure whether the man had recognized the significance of the  
gesture the day before, there was no doubt that he did now.    
Breath-touch of skin and psychic questing, Jim's low-psi only a  
faint echo that Spock had to strain to hear.

//you're so beautiful   didn't expect that   why are you so kind  
to me?//

//. . .// He didn't have words for his reasons yet.  He was only  
mute and aching with physical desire.

The same fingers that had kissed across his palm quested up his  
arm until they had enough of a grip to pull him down beside Jim's  
body.  He stayed very still, watching, one hand still on that  
naked back.  The eyes staring back at him were suddenly very much  
in the game.  Vivid energy that snapped through Jim's body and  
into his own, brilliant delight at a worthy challenge.

He was going to remember this for the rest of his life.  His  
stillness on the bed, clothed beside the half-naked human form,  
shattering hazel staring him down, and then he was kissed,  
tentatively, one hand curled up and behind his head and the other  
laying just under his cheek.

Coffee and human tears.  Bright non-taste that was Jim Kirk  
underneath it.

He leaned forward, into that mouth, into the bare shoulder,  
stroked the strangely cool palate with the tip of his tongue.    
Rolled so that Jim was on his back and under Spock, attentive and  
flaring gold.  If he would never have the opportunity to repeat  
this moment, he could at least extend it, stilling Kirk with a  
hand and drawing the kiss out gently.  He was so close, so open,  
that Spock could hear echoes of the man's thoughts, bright  
torrent of sensation and emotion and a warm, expanding thing that  
he recognized as desire.

Jim's hands had risen to his shoulders, and they were pushing him  
back.  In that moment, he was confused, but when he surrendered  
to the push, Jim followed him up, stayed kissing him, still  
pushing deeper and fighting to control both their breaths.

There were fingers at his waist, drawing his shirt up, and he was  
able to slip out of it gracefully enough.  The trousers went less  
elegantly, and for an instant he was horribly cold, until the  
other body wrapped around him.  Skin to skin after that, his  
heart under the curve of Jim Kirk's arm and Jim's a moth flutter  
under the cage of his ribs.  He was hard, but perhaps he had  
never fully controlled the wave of desire he had woken on.  Jim  
under him, fighting him, kissing him and twisting under him,  
rising to kiss the lids of his eyes.

"Oh god you were blind.  I thought I'd lost you.  I couldn't have  
taken that, not both of you so fast."  Jim hadn't even been on  
the list of Spock's considerations when he'd been willing to  
trade his eyesight for the life of a planet, but shock ran  
through him now.  Human waves of grief spiralling out from the  
golden body under his.

"I know."  As much comfort as he could offer in those words.  He  
had to cradle the man and calm him for long minutes.  It gave him  
time to explore.  Straight thighs, the hollow and flesh-rise of a  
hip, nerve-endings in the nipples that hardened under his touch.    
By the time Spock had a knee cradled in the crook of his elbow,  
Jim was very calm, only trembling a little from the sensation and  
radiating nothing more intense than his desire.

Then he could relax and rest his head on the man's belly.  An  
instant or two there, breathing through the stiff hair that ran  
down to his groin, then he followed the line to Jim's erection  
and took it carefully into his mouth.

"Jesus."  Long exhalation, some culturally remembered deity.    
Spock's attention was elsewhere, collecting the bright-sharp  
taste of precum and mapping the most sensitive places on the  
curved skin.  Ran his tongue up the shaft and paused just under  
the head, then changed his angle and relaxed so Jim could thrust  
into his throat.  "Yes, oh god, oh please don't stop."

//would never leave you in such a state//

"Thank you.  Yesss . . ."

He had to be careful of his teeth, but it wasn't so difficult,  
and the right combination of touches brought his partner over,  
moaning and spurting down his throat.  Stayed there, stroking  
Jim's belly and thighs until the penis in his mouth had softened,  
then stroked it apologetically with his lips and tongue before  
letting go.  Crawled up close as soon as he could after that,  
because he was cold without the other man's body against him, and  
still desperately hard.

Jim Kirk was spread out on the bedspread like a thing come apart,  
but he reached blindly for Spock as soon as he was close.    
Cradled Vulcan hips between his thighs, kissed him softly.  

Jim's hand pressed his, cold glass or synthetic container cupped  
in the palm.  Spock found the cap's release by touch, let the  
lubricant pour over his fingertips.  Stroked behind the other  
man's scrotum, down to the tiny hole, rubbed it gently.  Pushed  
gently, then harder, for the first penetration.  Tight.  He had  
to move carefully; he could so easily damage the trust he had  
been offered.  He stretched the muscle gently, kissed his way  
from sternum to navel as he waited for Jim to relax.  Jim's mind  
already beating frantically against his as he rose from post-  
coital languor into a second arousal.

//yesss Spock please yes     feels so good    need you need you     
don't you dare leave me//

//shhh I know   steady t'hy'la     do you want this//

//!//

He almost laughed at that, restrained himself only because he  
could imagine his lover's shock at the sound.  Instead, he curled  
both arms around the other man and rolled them until Jim's body  
was spooned in his, both of them facing the window.  Amazing,  
that he could contain this beauty with just a touch.  That he  
could bend and kiss Jim over his shoulder, their mouths just  
barely reaching.  That their bodies should fit together like  
this, long planes matching each other.  A leg held in the crook  
of his arm and he thrust in, harder than care would have  
dictated, but Jim only arched back against him, brilliant and  
ecstatic in the dark.

Later, he remembered the stillness of those minutes, a lovemaking  
accomplished by small shifts of weight and light touches rather  
than rhythmic coupling.  The way Jim's hair brushed against his  
shoulder when the man arched back.  He remembered curling his  
hips forward to sink as deeply as possible into Jim's body.    
Stroking him from shoulder to hip, then sliding the same hand  
over the thin skin where belly and thigh met.  Breathy laughter  
that caught at the end.  His fingers combed through the stiff  
hair, stroked down behind Jim's cock to trace each testicle in  
its sac.  Behind that to where they were joined, where his touch  
made both of them gasp and arch.

Stroking Jim finally to orgasm, letting him shake in a still  
embrace, then rocking harder into him, two thrusts, three, and  
coming wordlessly, his face pressed tightly into Jim's hair.    
Bright

//pleasure   joy   brilliantlight   Jim//

//yes   love you//

Afterward, he remembered the stillness in the room.  Even Jim's  
breath was almost perfectly silent.  Both of them curled like  
that on the bed, gradually chilling until Spock reached blindly  
and found a blanket to wrap around them.  Bare legs still tangled  
and exposed to the room.  Jim Kirk against his chest, human as a  
caged moth.  One hand stretched behind him to caress Spock's face  
and then reach around under the hairline to trace the contours of  
his skull.

*****

Cold woke him.  The room had chilled overnight, and he was  
sleeping alone.  He reached psychically first, then with his eyes,  
for his captain.  Not far, but dressed again.  The same jeans, and  
Spock's coat wrapped around his bare shoulders, sitting backwards  
on a chair and staring out the window at the rising light.  When  
he noticed Spock looking for him, Kirk nodded and extended an arm,  
but let it drop when the other man didn't immediately accept.

"Jim."

"I'm OK.  I just thought I'd feel better, for some reason."  

It was still there, of course.  Raw edges of grief spilling out  
from an unshielded mind.  He'd eased that only a little, and only  
through deep physical distraction.  The floor under his feet was  
cold, but he resisted the instinctive urge to dress, or even wrap  
himself against the chill.  He crossed the room and rolled to his  
knees in front of the other man.  Reached up and traced a brow.    
Jim caught the finger and kissed it, then stroked it with two  
matching ones, but he didn't smile.

Grief as an emotion was not quite beyond Spock, but it had taken  
him a long time to grasp the human experience of raw absence that  
was its source.  He was thinking of the taste of the desert and  
the long, flat run to Gol in spite of the brilliant humidity of  
the Terran day.

"Jim, will you trust me?"

"You know I do, Spock.  Why?  What is it?"  Sudden spike of  
curiosity in both presence and voice.

He stood and offered a hand to his new lover.  Stood very still  
while Jim rose, then drew the man to him so that they stood back  
to front before of the window, Jim in denim against Spock's bare  
skin.  He could see the tiny prismatic effects of the window  
glass as they struck that skin.

It wasn't something he even had to reach for.  He needed the long  
seconds more to be sure he actually wanted to share this.  He  
stretched out psychically, then, as he wrapped an arm around the  
body in front of him and pressed fingertips to Jim's face.

//can you feel me//

//yes     Spockwhat//

// . . . //    Opened himself to the distant hugeness that was  
one of his language's most primitive words, and let the awareness  
of its being bleed over to Jim.

//oh god   what//

//*a'Tha*// Immanence, existence of something unspeakably ancient  
that was yet not what humans would call God.

He stilled himself, opened again.  Reached for the swelling human  
energy that he could always feel on Earth and that he had  
gradually understood as the lingering low-psychic presence of the  
dead.

// . . . //

"Sam . . ."

He had no words for this at all, but he could feel Kirk's joy  
expanding.  And he could remember the first time he'd touched it.    
How he'd lost a friend in his Academy days and then been able to  
reach out and still feel them in the sunlight.  Even then, he  
hadn't been as young as the man he was holding, and even when he  
had been that young, he'd never allowed himself that kind of  
ecstatic wonder.

He eased them back slowly, opened his eyes to brilliant light  
touching Kirk's face and his by proxy.

"Oh god, Spock.  Thank you."

Kirk's skin against his was cool, but not uncomfortable in the  
sun's focussed warmth.  The raw edges of Jim's grief were easing,  
slowly, but Spock was surprised at the extent to which they had  
bled over to his own mind.  He was past being careful, running  
entirely on trust and the collection of thoughts that was as  
close to the human idea of love as he dared approach.  So  
beautiful, this man he was holding.  The human fragments of him  
screamed to be afraid.  He was already too close.  It would be so  
easy for this man to take him completely apart.

 

 

[23 May 2000]


End file.
